AVCHD Camcorder Review: Panasonic AG-HSC1

If you are looking for a small, and we mean really small, 3-chip high-def AVCHD[1] camcorder with professional features, then you really have only one choice: the new AG-HSC1 from Panasonic. As it has features like three 1/4" native 16:9 CCDs and manual adjustment of iris, shutter, white balance and mic input levels, we found ourselves forced to reconsider what really defines a "professional" or "consumer" camcorder.

Quote: The AG-HSC1 has three recording modes, from low- to high-quality: HE, HN and HF. HE and HN modes both record with variable bit rates, while HF uses constant bit rate of 13Mbps. Recording times on a 4GB SDHC card vary from 40 minutes to an hour and a half, as you move from high- to low-quality modes.

To achieve these long recording times, the AVCHD format, even more so than HDV, is highly compressed, which means there are (currently) unavoidable trade-offs. During our tests, the most notable were the temporal artifacts that show up as stuttering movement in pans and tilts at moderate and fast speeds. This really is no more apparent on the AG-HSC1 than on other camcorders in this class, but you need to keep it in mind when assessing any new camcorder.

Are you get your AVCHD Video Converter prepared well?

However, you have already been quite satisfied with commonly non-AVCHD-supported based models, and the ouput AVCHD file now is playable on both Blu-ray player and your PS3. But, have you ever thought about to find one third party software to manage your AVCHD videos in a better way?